La Bicicletta
Contents
- Opens the case for cycling as the healthiest, most useful and most patriotic of pastimes, comparing the cyclist's work in kilogrammetres with the pedestrian's and citing the 39th Infantry's Monferrato run of 30-31 May and 1 June 1896 at 16 km/h. Goes on to Captain Gérard's folding low-wheel military bicycle, women's cycling (Princess Laetitia's Turin festival of July 1896, the Paris women's congress), and the machine's spread through trade, post, police and the Milan socialists' use of it in the elections of 14 June 1896.
- Surveys military cycling army by army: Italy's wooden velocipedes in the 1875 manoeuvres, the 1886 course and the 1891 model built at the Pavia engineer works; France's 1889, 1892 and 5 April 1895 decrees; Britain's 26th Middlesex and the Duke of Connaught's review of 600 cyclists at Aldershot on 25 July 1896; Germany's 1894-95 manoeuvres and regulation of 30 May 1896; plus Russia, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland's Bern school, Bavaria and General Miles's proposed US cyclist regiment. Includes the Colt machine-gun mounted on a bicycle and a cannon dismounted between two coupled machines.
- Sets out the physical, moral and intellectual qualities and the special training the military cyclist needs - map reading, sketching, reconnaissance, marksmanship, running repairs - and argues that record-chasing sport cycling produces none of them, citing Bouny's 1896 paper to the Paris Academy of Sciences on the cost of speed. Proposes that the national rifle-shooting societies (La Morra, La Spezia, Rome) train reservist cyclists, and closes with four measures: a military cyclist's certificate, a regimental badge, the use of cyclists on leave as despatch riders in manoeuvres, and promotion of the best to territorial militia officers.